Prophecy and Gender

Apart from the women you have to study for this week's seminar, Lady Eleanor Davies is also a very interesting example of a female prophet of the Civil War period. Lady Eleanor prophesized only in print - illegally.

Here is an extract from her work, A Warning to the Dragon and All his Angels (1625),
where the relationship between God and the believer is fashioned as the relationship between a jealous husband and his wife. Can you find other examples in women prophets's writings where marriage is a metaphor for piousness?

 

‘Suppose a man after his Marriage to a young Virgin, should say, my experience is more then yours, I cannot always walke hand in hand with you, neither may I keepe you in a Cloister that will not be for your health or my profit, neither must you forget your Covenant to bee subject to my desires not tending to the harme of either of us; I love you as mine own Body, if I should not love you, I should not love my selfe, you are tender and faore without blemish or blot, so I would have your minde also without spot or wrinckle like your face, many stangers will strive to bee your Servants; not all for your beautie but some for malice and envie to me;

Though your intent be good in all things, yet because I am very jealous of mine honor, entertaine none in tht manner; though they be silent for a time, and conceale themselves; in the end they will draw your affection from me; Besides, much resort thee be never so chaste, is dalliance the marke of a knowne Harlot, which sort of women I would have you differ from, and no marke I know more fit to put a difference betweene you then this; for much entertainment will not only waste our substance, better imployed upon more necessary occasions, but consume in unprofitable idlenesse.

Is there no consequent, yes doutblesse, I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other Gods but me; thou shalt not make images of any likenesse to bowe or humble thy selfe before them; for of my honor I am a jealous God, you are mine, I bought you to enjoy the libertie of my service; I brought yee out of the house of bondage, which no other God could doe; thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and keep his charge and his Statues.'  (pp. 94-95)

Image from EEBO

Popery, Monstrosity, and the Body

In the reading for this week, Peter Lake provides us with a brief explanation of popery: 'for Protestants popery had allowed merely human authorities, traditions and practices to take over the Church. the most obvious of these was the pope's usurpation of Chritst's role as the head of the Church. Once established, the authority of the pope was used to set up and confirm in the Church a whole series of ceremonies, forms of worship and beliefs which were of entirely human origin.' (p. 74)

Anti-popery and anti-Catholic sentiment were well served by the press. In the 1570 edition of Acts and Monuments, John Foxe writes:

'Printing came of God [...] that either the Pope is Antichrist, or else that Antichrist is near cousin to the Pope, and all this doth, and will hereafter more and more appear, by printing'.  

Below are some examples of how printing and especially images were enlisted in the Protestant cause. Reading these examples next to material for this week, you might want to consider how the body became the site for religious disputation.

Samuel Clarke's A Generall Martyrology was first published in 1651 and was very much written in the style of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments (1563). Clarke's tract included images of the types of torture that those persecuted by Catholicism had to endure. The full tract and more images are available on EEBO.

In the years following the Reformation, Rome was often alluded to in print as the Whore of Babylon (see for instance Thomas Dekker's play) and was depicted as a monstrous female figure.

Albrecht Dürer,  The Whore of Babylon, from The Apocalypse, 1498

"Albrecht Dürer: The Whore of Babylon (18.65.8)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/18.65.8 (October 2006)

from Hugh Broughton's A Concent of Scripture (1590)

Anon, The Popes Pyramides (1624)



Here is a comment on the first engraving:

'Dürer's representation of the Whore of Babylon inscribes political and religious differences in and through particular bodies: female, monstrous, angelic, heroic. The body of the Whore is itself an allegorical text to be deciphered and read. Her lavish clothing, jewelry, and gem-crusted crown mark her as a prostitute , one who has enriched herself on the trade and exchange of others: the elaborate chalice that she holds aloft conceals the wine of her (economic) fornication. The true monstrousness of the seemingly beautiful woman is revealed by the beast upon which she rides, with its grotesque heads of goats, asses, and birds, its monstrously scaly skin, its distended claw-feet, and its twisting tail... In the Dürer engraving, female and bestial bodies emblematize the corruption of pagan Rome.’

Laura Lunger Knoppers, '"The Antichrist, the Babilon, the great dragon": Oliver Cromwell, Andrew Marvell, and the Apocalyptic Monstrous' in Monstrous Bodies/ Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Laura Lunger Knoppers and Joan B. Landes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 93-126 (p.104)

The City of Venice

As mentioned in Week 2, Thomas Coryat visited different European countries and published his travelogue Coryat's Crudities in 1611.

One of the places he visited and wrote extensively about was Venice, the setting for Volpone. Although Jonson's play predates Coryat's Crudities , the travelogue is useful in understanding representations of Venice that the English people would encounter in travel writing. Jonson's audience would be familiar with depictions of Venice as described in Coryat's text.

Have a look at the text here and consider Coryat and Jonson's representation of Venetian gentlemen, gentlewomen, and courtesans.

Consider also what Fynes Moryson's Itinerary (1617) has to say about Venice and the law in these pages (163-5)

Volpone and the Beasts

Volpone 's 'Persons of the Play' list suggests that most of the characters are given names that betray the animal nature that each of these characters exemplifies in the play: Volpone (the fox), Mosca (the parasite), Voltore (vulture), Corvino (crow), Corbaccio (raven), Sir Politic Would-be (parrot), Peregrine (hawk).

The influence of beast fables on Jonson's play has been discussed by Brian Parker and David Bevington, the editors of the Revels Student Edition of the play (Manchester University Press, 1999). One of the prominent sources they idenitified for Volpone is the medieval tale of Reynard the Fox, which you can read here.

Image from EEBO

Image from EEBO

Consider whether we are meant to read Jonson's characters as humans exhibiting animal instincts, vices, and behaviour, or whether we should perceive them as animals exhibiting human characteristics in an allegorical tale.

What might the proximity of man to animal and animal to man tell us about the human and its limitations?

Here's an important passage from Erica Fudge's Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 7-8:

'If anthropocentrism - placing the human and human vision at the centre - leads, as I have argued, to anthropomorphism- seeing the world in our own image - and anhtropomorphism allows for the animalisation of humans then anthropocentrism paradoxically destroys anthropos as a category. By centralising the human, making the human vision the only vision, the separation of species is impossible. At the heart of the debate about animals lies a debate about humanity which has social and political ramifications. If an animal can beg, then is a (human) beggar also an animal? The implications of this question are plaued out in the sense that in order to assert human status writers have to make exclusions. Some humans are aligned with animals: in fact, some humans are not human at all.'